PTA Partnerships & Alliances: Featured Partner - Education Nation

National PTA^® is proud to support NBC News on an exciting, unprecedented week-long event to examine and redefine education in America. Education Nation took place during the week of September 26, 2010, and featured a nationally broadcast, in-depth conversation about improving education in the United States.

PTA is partnering with Education Nation to help shine a spotlight on the important role that families can play in supporting their child's education. The research is overwhelmingly clear: when parents play a positive role in their children's education, students do better in school. When parents are involved, students have better test scores and higher grades, attend school and pass their classes, graduate from high school, and go to college.

Education Nation Scorecard
In order to help parents get involved, PTA partnered with NBC News, GreatSchools, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and other organizations to create a tool for parents to better understand how their child's school is performing.

Parents can use the tool to look up their child's school and to see how it is doing compared to schools in the community, district, state and nation. More importantly, parents can use this information to have conversations with their child's teacher to find out how they can support their child's education. See the link called "What Can I Do?" on the Scorecard to help start the conversation.

Education Nation Summit
The summit opened a national dialogue regarding the gap between how we perceive education and the actual results that are being produced today. National PTA President Charles J. "Chuck" Saylors and former National PTA CEO Byron V. Garrett attended the summit and shared the value of family engagement as an effective solution to support academic achievement.

Teacher Town Hall
NBC's Brian Williams hosted a special Teacher Town Hall on September 26. The Teacher Town Hall brought together teachers from across the country, both in-person and online, to brainstorm ideas, talk about what works in the classroom, and highlight the challenges of today's education system.

Parent Resources

• Parent Tips to Use Data to Support Your Child's Education
• 100 Ways to Help Your Child and School Succeed
• 10 Things Parents Wish Schools/Teachers Would Do
• 10 Things Schools/Teachers Wish Parents Would Do
• Harvard Family Research Project's Parent Teacher Conference Tip Sheets for Principals, Teachers, and Parents (English and Spanish)

Resources for PTAs, Educators and Schools

• PTA's National Standards for Family School Partnerships - Overview
• PTA's National Standards Assessment Guide
• PTA's National Standards - Research Overview

For More Information: Education Nation

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